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KDE GUI

Konqueror.org Launched - KDE2 Web Browser 205

Posted by Hemos from the cool-new-browser-technology dept.
Rob Kaper writes: "The KDE team has launched www.konqueror.org, a site devoted to their browser component for KDE2. "Konqi" can do HTML4, CSS2, SSL, Java, Javascript, SMB shares and soon even Netscape plug-ins such as Flash. I've seen it in action and looks like a very worthy competitor to Mozilla."
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Konqueror.org Launched - KDE2 Web Browser More

Konqueror.org Launched - KDE2 Web Browser

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  • The release status of the application (Score:4)

    by nitehorse ( 58425 ) <clee@c133.org> on Tuesday May 02, 2000 @03:18AM (#1097928)
    Konqueror itself will be released with KDE2- the web site is there to be a place for users to find out information about it and decide whether or not they want to use it. If GNOME's killer app will be Evolution, KDE's killer app is definitely Konqueror. It is the testbed and backbone for nearly every one of the new KDE2 technologies- KIO, KParts, KHTML, and several more.

    It's an interesting world to be in, and the site is only going to get better. As the webmaster, I can say that it *will* definitely get better.

    -Chris

  • konqi??? (Score:4)

    by hummer ( 15382 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2000 @03:18AM (#1097929) Homepage
    Konqi???
    You've got to be kidding me. Will the person responsible for this step forward so that they might be beaten with a pointy stick? It sounds like a bloody teletubby for gods sake!
    Does anyone actually think to themselves, "ooh i wonder if there's anything new on slashdot, I'll just fire up Konqi".
    This is right up there with Geeko, the Suse chameleon/gecko/greenturdwithatail.

    Really... If you're going to name your software, for the love of god, please try to make it something inspiring instead of this cutesy crap
  • Agreed. I think that this comes down to the user not getting handcuffed by the app and being allowed to be as smart or as stupid as they want.
    Ie: if you have 4 panes open, one with your local files, one with a browser, one with a file view of your files on a remote server, logged in as root, and one with a user login on a system you're in the process of changing from a user system to an mp3 server.. well, I see a bit of potential for error there. ie: Bad Idea

    However, if you do a 2 pane system, one of local files, one of say, a remote ftp server where you're uploading files, this is a Good Idea.

    :)

    alan, stating the obvious again...

  • IE is not one big application. Nor is Konqueror, nor is Nautilus, nor Evolution. IE, for example, is made up of hundreds of smaller programs, components, glued together in a shell. Component technology is extremely powerful, efficient, and sweet. :)
    ----
  • No, actual XML support. Like Mozilla.
    I can take an arbitrary piece of XML, add a stylesheet directive and turn it into a wonderful web presentation of the same data.
    The book example shows Mozilla rendering the same XML fragment as a two great looking E-commerce interfaces, from the same data. Just alter the CSS and all your database content flows into the new layout.

    You can achieve 99% of this with HTML and scripting, but why bother? If browsers like Mac IE and Mozilla support XML properly it will all Just Work (TM)

  • why aren't browsers not only keeping up, but staying ahead of the curve?

    Because the people they are selling web browsers to (well, selling in a metaphorical sense) are people who view web pages, not those who make them.

    Sure, you can argue that being able to display all of the CSS standards would result in a really kick-ass browser that joe-user would flock to since it renders tons of pages really well. But, by and large, struggling to adhere to every minor spec in CSS is a diminishing return proposition. If you hit the high points, you can claim CSS (or CSS1) compatibility. Some of the CSS stuff will work, and some people's pages will look neat. Makes the marketing guys happy. Makes users think you're cool. And you don't have to pay all those programmers to do a thorough job.

    Let's face it, there are many other pressures on the browsers maker. If you were project manager for IE or Netscape, and you could develop either better support of CSS features, which may marginally make the rendering of pages better, or a killer end-user feature that will make joe-user go "good golly! lookee here!", which will you go for? And, of course, and spare resources you'd probably put into trying to make the thing crash a bit less often, or making it a bit less of a godawful bloated stinking whale of an application.

    I suspect, by this point, that a lot of resources are spent just trying to cope with how bloated these apps are.

    As for those that are up-and-coming (perhaps you'd throw Mozilla into this category) there is a struggle to get all of the "must haves" into their browser. Think of it. For a complete browser these days, you have to interpret two markup languages (HTML and XML), one scripting language, tie into Java, have a plugin architecture, support a bunch of graphics formats, tie into e-mail programs (or supply your own), and support multiple platforms. And you have to throw that program up against all of the heinous web pages out there that were poorly written, or perhaps just written in a way to try to cope with both IE and Netscape. That's a tall order... and will take a long time to develop. The pressure to cut corners and get the thing out the door is high (especially if you're a for-pay development concern). I'll be impressed if Konqueror can deliver on all of that within a reasonable time.

  • Besides, you can run it from any desktop environment you want - as long as you have the KDE libraries installed

    Which means you have to port the KDE libs to your platform first, unless they already make KDE for BeOS, Mac OS, or Microsoft Windows.

  • You have completely misunderstood the WWW. The goal has _always_ been about managing information. Just reading the title of Tim Berners-Lee initial WWW proposal ( http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html ) "Information Management: A Proposal" says it.

    I suggest you read about WebDAV ( http://www.webdav.org ).

    /mill - tired of all this
  • I've regularly used KDE2 (including KOffice) for close to a year now. Things have been usable and more than screenshots for quite a long time. They just aren't release quality, as bug exists. I can live with a crash of an app here and there, but it shouldn't exist when the general public gets it. KWord has been usable to create documents for a long time. Things like the MS filters need work before release. I just don't use Office, so those are of little use to me. But I have made documents, printed them, used various formatting features, given them to clients, etc. with little problem (save regularly).


  • Shouldn't you be working? Business must be slow at VA if you've got the time to sit around and troll on Slashdot. I hope for your sake its your coffee break.

    Considering VA Linux's whopping 5% marketshare among Linux hardware vendors [excite.com], according to IDC, I can't say im really surprised. Way to go, by the way. You guys edged past tough big-name Linux vendors like "Fujitsu Siemens" with 3%, and uhh...oh wait, you guys arent doing better than any of the others.. Oh well.

    Truth hurts, doesn't it. [excite.com]


    Bowie J. Poag
  • I've using E with KDE2 off and on since January, both with E as wm in KDE2 and KDE2 apps within E alone. Its takes a little tweaking thats all.

    Jonathan Moran
  • You are right, of course, but there are a couple of key differences:

    The KDE guys have not littered the field with their enemies who have been ruthlessly destroyed or muscled aside for the sake of commercial gain. Also, KDE sells to everyone for the same price (free) rather than having "most-favored" pricing for sycophants and "screw-you" pricing for those that have "transgressed" against them. Finally, KDE does not completely dominate anything in particular, and exist within a movement where doing so is not a favorable objective.

    -L
  • Herein lies a problem with OSS. The problem is that it is impossible to extend solutions, only to re-implement them.

    Take some simple application that runs on the console, and manipulates files. If a hacker had a particular itch to have his files manipulated a certain way, then he would take this source code, add a couple of new parameter switches, and the new functionality was born.

    However, now, it is a lot more complex. The projects are larger, and are inheriting more structure from their ancestors. I.e. Konqueror relates more to KDE, Gnome apps are relate more to Gnome, and Mozilla had to go for the cross platform look. Now, its not so much that people fix software to scratch an itch, its because they disagree with the way someone is scratching it.

    Granted, Gnome, and KDE need their own file managers/web browsers, but that is more because the two do not have the same standards, and once you have multiple desktop environments, then you have multiple apps for that desktop.

    Its no longer suitable to just take mozilla code, and a feature here and there. These applications are way beyond tweaking some file manipulation software. We are talking about hugely feature rich applications, and to add those features, it may be easier to rewrite than do s hoddy job up putting a square peg in a round hole.

    I.e. Gnome with Bonobo could provide the ability to implement a HTML render in a spreadsheet (Gnumeric). To do this, you need a HTML renderer, and a spreadsheet. You can either take an existing spreadsheet / renderer, fork the code, and make it bonobo aware, or you can just write your own. The problem with the former solution is that the structure of the software may not make it that easy to be Bonobo aware.

    I think the number of applications being written makes things pretty exciting, and I think it will take a couple of attempts to get things right. KDE 2, Gnome 2....as Eric Raymond said, be prepared to throw the first one away.

    Regards,

    Andy

  • What it is is this (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Most people up through the present moment aren't online all the time. They "go online". Imagine a special sound like the Startrek transoprter. Or some cheesey graphic from the mystical pyramid of AOL ca. 1994. It's a magical threshold they cross--or rather that's how it's been. Of course their experience is way different than that of someone whose personal computer is always on and always connected to the Internet, sending its own mail and maybe offering http, ftp for (ab)use.
    Since being "online" is a separate, different experience or activity, they have wanted and used Internet apps that do it all in one place. They log on to surf pr0n, and it's nice that their browser alerts them to the fact that there's mail to pick up, because being transients on the network, they aren't going to know any other way. When they're done, they log off and close one app, and only one, and go do their strictly local stuff.
    Maybe that preference for kitchen-sink internet interfaces will change, but then again people are used to it now, and they believe it is the simple way to accomplish their online activities. Do I need to go into how they view and value simplicity?
  • For all the times i have used linux, there existed LYNX. It is fast, supports many goodies (but not all of them) and easy to use. Why people don't keep using it or even GUI'ising it (a simple one not with an e-mail client)
  • I'm not a lawyer, but if I understand the conclusions of law correctly,
    it's not really the same, though somewhat similar.
    The difference is that, in the Microsoft case, they were putting in a browser to expand an almost-monopoly in OSes to an almost-monopoly in browsers.
    The difference is mostly that
    • KDE is not a monopoly or anywhere near
    • Konqueror is not introducing any proprietary non-standard HTML extensions that could lead to websites that can be viewed only in konqueror
    • You can still use KDE applications if you don't install konqueror (you can't run Windows applications without installing Explorer, unless you count wine and the likes)

  • *claps*

    A great troll!. It sucks you in with a good intro, and keeps you there with things that are actually TRUE. Then BAM! The troll side hits you like a ton of bricks.

    This kind of thing makes my work day a lot more fun :)

  • Re:Released? (Score:3)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero&redhat,com> on Tuesday May 02, 2000 @03:23AM (#1097946) Homepage
    Konqueror has not been released - konqueror.org has been.
    Besides, you can run it from any desktop environment you want - as long as you have the KDE libraries installed, you don't need to be running KDE's window mangager or any other KDE tools to use Konqueror.

    RPMs of a recent CVS snapshot for Red Hat Linux can be found at
    http://people.redhat.com/bero/experimen tal/ [redhat.com]. Konqueror is part of the kdebase package.
  • IE3 anywhere had minimal CSS1 support while the first versions of the recommendations were being written.

    Cut out the "coverage BEFORE IT WAS EVEN A COMPLETE RECOMMENDATION" part.

    Rami
    --
  • "I have recently read that KDE 2.0 is suppposed to be highly componentilized also. Is KDE using something like bonobo? "
    Yes indeed, KDE uses the very powerful component technology called KParts. It's mentionned on www.konqueror.org [konqueror.org] - you should really read it :-)
    As to being a threat to Mozilla, that is certainly not the goal. Providing something that works well (in terms of rendering, memory usage, stability etc.), and providing a choice, are more the goals. And konqueror is much more than 'just' a web browser...
  • ...I just hope that the KDE guys will leave it as an option to use either KHTMLPart or NGLayout as the HTML renderer in Konqueror. That would be great.

  • You get a life, I didn't use my plus one bonus, my default level just happens to be 2. If there were a -1 bonus I'd probably use it for shit like this so I don't have to listen to you little pussies bitch and moan, but there ain't one.

    There, maybe this will bring my karma down. If not, someone please -1 me, several times preferably.

  • so? (Score:3)

    by Capt Dan ( 70955 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2000 @09:06AM (#1097951) Homepage
    Web browser?
    file manager?
    Document viewer?
    Customizable?

    Uh... so they want to be Emacs? (somebody had to say it =) )


    "You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
  • I know this isn't a KDE help site, but I've been baffled by all the KDE2 binaries (RPMs). I can not, for the life of me, locate "qt21" or "at21-devel" anywhere, although I've unearthed enough information to know that they exist somewhere. I can't install any of the new KDE2 stuff (i.e. konqueror, koffice) without these mysterious qt packages, but I can't find them anywhere. Here is what I currently have installed: qt-1.44-15mdk qt-devel-1.44-15mdk qt2-2.1.0-4mdk qt2-devel-2.1.0-4mdk Alas, no "qt21-xxx.rpm" or "qt21-devel-xxx.rpm" to be found. :-(
  • I still have a subscription to wired. Why? beacuse it reminds be of the time when WIRED DIDN'T SUCK!

    Nice troll... everyone knows there was NEVER a time that Wired didn't suck.
  • I've not done this, but it may be informative.

    Install a Windows98 or NT4 (sp6a) or W2K system.

    Install a Linux system, with KDE. Add Konqueror.

    Run both for a little while to see how each behaves.

    Now remove Konqueror from the Linux box and remove IE from the Windows box. To be fair, reboot both systems. Explore each system again.

    Does removing Konqueror have the same effect on Linux with KDE as removing IE from Windows does? If so, then there is a case. Now, not having run the experimnet myself, I don't *know* the result... but I know which way I'd bet.
  • You can split your Explorer window in to various child windows and simultaneouly view web pages, image files, browse your home directory and download from ftp in one parent window. Cool! You can also type in an FTP address, and in Win2K Explorer images will preview to the left of the browse window, but they are a far cry from introducing anything nearly as flexible as Konqueror promises to be.
  • I was going to make the lynx remark, but someone already took it. :(

    But what I'm wondering, is how low a system do you have? KDE/Qt libs hardly "bog down" a system in my experience. I suppose if you have less than P200/32MB it's an issue, but come now K6's are up to 550 Mhz, and memory is back down to roughly $1US per meg (less if you look a little).

    Starting up Mozilla, I show 21MB of memory in use. So that's going to be a stetch for any terribly low-end system. This argument of system resources is just pretty much futile. Even when I was in college, living off my few hundred dollars a month Army National Guard pay, I was able to save and put together a reasonable system for the time.
  • You're seriously misinformed. Konqueror is not "one gigantic app". In fact, the executable is but a few hundred Kb. Almost *everything* in Konqueror is a component, even the file manager and the web browser if I'm not mistaken. This is the same with IE, Nautilus, Mozilla etc. This breaking-down of functionality actually facilitates debugging, not the opposite as you seem to think :-)

    --
  • The placement of the window buttons is completely configurable. Change it to the left side if you don't like where it is. Check out the kcontrol sectin on window decorations.

  • The release schedule for KDE 2.0 (which will of course include Konqueror) was posted today on the kde-devel mailinglist right here [kde.org].

    First beta (1.90, "Konfucious")in a week, gold (2.0, "Kopernicus") in September.

  • It seems pretty obvious to my why it's flame bait. If he were to give some reasons why it sucks, then that'd be different, but just to say it sucks is baiting flames, intentionally or not.
  • the fundamental rule of KDE (and Gnome) development is "We hate Microsoft, but we copy their every move anyway."

    Not quite.
    I can't speak for all of us, but my version of that rule (and I have the impression that most other KDE/Gnome developers share it) is more like

    "Microsoft is bad, but that doesn't mean everything they do is bad".

    If Microsoft comes up with something good (which has, by the way, almost never been the case - virtually all of the good stuff they have has been copied from someone else), the fact that Microsoft has it is not a reason not to re-implement it.

    Having the option to make the UI look a lot like theirs is also a good thing because most future Linux/*BSD/... users are Windows users right now, and they don't want to relearn everything.

    For those of us who don't like this UI look, it can easily be switched to something nicer.
    Both KDE and Gnome are reasonably configurable about looks by now.
  • It's the "much improved" successor of that browser.
  • Well, at least it's better that the usual style of unix programs, which would render it something like kxbwlq (KDE X-Window Browser With Long aQronym - Motto: It's easy! Just type it on the command line!)

  • What does e-mail have to do with a browser?

    Mail.com [mail.com], Coldmail.com [coldmail.com], Hotmail.com [hotmail.com], Yahoo.com [yahoo.com], AOL.com webmail, etc. The good ones have encrypted login pages.

  • ...not another fucking browser that will make my life hell. (As a web developer)

  • I wonder how long before MS does something similar and calls it an "Innovation"

    I'd call that the Win98 explorer.exe, where you can type a Web URL into the pathname bar.

  • Honestly, I dislike M$ as much as the next guy, but I really can't get to appreciate Mozilla a whole lot. It crashed often, seems bug-filled, it's huge, come on! What are these programmers doing?

    Call this a flame if you want, but I want a slim browser that supports all the latest features. KDE seem to be on a good path to that end.
  • Never checked that button in my life. Read the FAQ on how default posting levels work moron.

    Yeh, I know how it works. I also know what the +1 box is for. Just beacuse a certan number of your posts were good at one point in time dosn't mean that all of them will be all the time. If you want to say something usless, click the box.

    When I read a +2 I don't want to see a one line comment saying "Read the FAQ...moron". I don't litter in the +2 space please.
  • Please don't let this thread become another excuse to slag off Mozilla. I know the story poster hasn't so much, but I know there are a lot of slashdotters who love to. A couple of points.
    1. This isn't trying to be cross platform in the same was as Mozilla is and this has a head start in terms of simplicity.
    2. A lot of the features claimed in the article are targets, not where the package is right now
    Knowing how good KDE hackers are, I'm sure this will turn out to be every bit as good as they claim it is and for KDE users, it will be a better fit to that environment because of the component technology it uses. But whatever sucess Konqueror scores, there is still a place for Mozilla.
    --
  • A casual glance at the website indicates that it is a new development, unrelated to kfm.

    There was no indication of when this wonderful beast could finally be up and running. Reading between the lines in some places, it is not ready yet.
  • If you use the KDE2 alphas, remember to report any bugs you can (after checking the bugs aren't already fixed). All KDE apps have a bug reporting form in their Help menus.
    --
  • It's not quite true - konqueror is really quite usable by now.
    KOffice could do a lot of interesting things when the first screenshots were put up - it just turned out the technology used was not reliable, so it was rewritten.

    Also, this type of "marketing" (I wouldn't call it that) is, to an extent, required - we need users because in opensourceland, users == developers, and you can't get something like KOffice with only one person.

    (By the way, I think it's odd you'd mention XFree86 as someone who doesn't do it - did you forget all the time before 4.0 ("we'll have 3D support then", ...), and do you call 4.0 stable?)
  • I have played with linux and have had problems when trying to upgrade to Netscape 4.7.2 . If it were not for the built in KDE browser I would have been browserless. The only function that the old browser did not perform was FTP downloads. I had to use the Command Line version of FTP to do any downloads. I will look forward to an upgraded version of an already worthwhile product.

  • I feel it coming together. (Score:3)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2000 @03:26AM (#1097974) Homepage Journal
    Hmmm. XML based configuration of menus and other stuff; support for ECMA script; support for an object embedding and linking model... Stir in Reiser FS (to handle data storage at the file system level instead of the file level)...

    I can see this assemblage of stuff morphing into a VB like application platform.

  • Yes, KDE 2.0 uses a component architecture... haven't looked at nautilus much, but basically the way KDE 2.0 and Konqueror works is that pretty much everything is a component.

    This is a quote from an interview with Mosfet (one of the KDE 2.0 developers)

    "The main difference is now KDE2 is heavily component based, focusing of the browser. All of the KOffice applications (KWord, KPresenter KIllustrator, KSpread, KImageShop, KIllustrator, KChart, and KFormula) as well as many other KDE applications such as the PS/PDF viewer, mpeg and image viewers, and DVI viewers are all components now - internet transparent and embeddable in the browser. You can even embed the terminal application in the browser and change directories using the arrow buttons ;-) Pretty cool. KDE easily boasts the most extensive and complete component model support for Unix desktops."

    The interview is located here [olinux.com.br]

    .technomancer

  • THE difference is that you can run Linux without Konqi/KDE, but you couldn't run Windows without Internet Explorer (as said by MS). That was what the case was about.

    What the future will be is the embedding they are doing right now with KDE and Gnome, everything is a component and if you want HTML support in your texteditor, KLABAM! Just embed that HTML component.

    Thimo
    --
  • No. This doesn't sound familiar at all. You see, Konquerer is not built into any operating system. Linux is an operating system. KDE is a desktop environment. The defining feature of an operating system is that it operates the hardware in your computer and provides a programmatic interface to other software. KDE and other desktops are part of the other software, not the operating system.

    The objection in Microsoft's case is that the browser if foisted upon everyone who only wants the operating system. When you try to patch the operating system by installing a service pack for Windows NT, it requires you to install Internet Explorer. The browser is similarly bundled with a variety of other Microsoft software. You cannot install IIS nor Exchange without first installing Internet Explorer. I find this less disturbing because IIS and Exchange are not core components of the operating system, but it still indicative of a trend.

    The same objection will never be made in the case of Linux. You will always be able to have Linux without whatever you don't want. Download, configure, build. Make your own distribution. It is what RMS is always saying but nobody is listening: Free Software is about Freedom. With Linux, KDE, GNOME, Mozilla, and the rest, you get to decide.


  • Never checked that button in my life. Read the FAQ on how default posting levels work moron.
  • IS THIS NEW KDE BROWSER, SIMILAR TO LYNX (TEXT-ONLY) OR HTML-BASED? WHEN THIS BROWSER IS RELEASED, WILL NETSCAPE AND INTERNET EXPLORER CEASE TO EXIST -- I PREFER TEXT-ONLY BROWSERS
  • Man this thread brings back memories.. I got my c64 when I was 4 (I'm 21 now), watched Peewee, and Computer Chronicles too. I remember on CC when they just started getting a lot of applications switching over to Windows, and the guy said "Hey, it works in Windows, I _like_ that". And so started my years as a drone Windows user until 1996...

    I also remember learning about Einstein's Theory of Relativity on PBS on the weekends when I was in junior high.. with the show switching between the professor in the classroom, the semi-CG, and the shots of scientists in the 1800's walking around with scrolls. :)

  • Re:What about the CSS support? (Score:4)

    by King Babar ( 19862 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2000 @04:52AM (#1097982) Homepage
    Has anyone tested how extensive the CSS/CSS2 support in Konqueror is? All of the other main browsers (yes, even Mozilla) support CSS in a very patchy 'mine field' sort of way.

    Care to share where some of the worst bombs are? :-) Seriously, I've noticed that the latest version of Explorer on the Mac and Mozilla on, well, anything, do an almost perfect job at CSS1, at least according to the w3.org test suite [w3.org]

    I'm getting really tired of writing CSS that works in only one version of one platform. What's up with that?

    That's the sound of the market not insisting on standards compliance. But note that things are really beginning to catch up now. Within a year, I susptect sites that don't effectively use CSS (including slashdot) are going to look increasingly dorky.

    How hard could it possibly be to support CSS in an even way, across *all* platforms??

    Really, really hard I think. Seriously, once you start getting to support CSS at the level of units in ems, exes picas, mm and pixels when your output is some random CRT, I think it would make the strong weep.

    What about CSS3? Anyone heard what the browsers are doing about this?

    CSS3 is, alas, way out there; there's not even a unified proposal yet [w3.org]

    I suspect that the first universal thing we'll see out of CSS3 is the paged media stuff, which is already sort of available in Explorer.

    Doing style right is hard, and I think everybody can see now that it's worth doing right. At least, I hope that's the case...

  • Not to mention work going on with wxWindows, which really rocks, especially combined with Python.

    Not a rocking web site, however. And it was weird that I know other languages besides Python have wxWindows bindings, but they go unmentioned. I really agree that having multiple groups working on competing projects is a good thing. There are different sets of assumptions which lead to different solutions. Prime examples: how cross platform? Relatively stand alone or part of a larger desktop environment? Run natively or in a browser?

    What you say is true, although I think there are pieces of the solution that should tend to be constant. In particular, I suspect that anybody who goes and and tries to put together a truly monolithic solution to any problem is asking to get waxed. And any group that tries to implement Yet Another File Format (YAFF) without learning the lessons taught by NetCDF or XML or anything that has been worked out rather carefully deserves to die horribly. And if you don't expose APIs carefully to allow people to use whatever language they like to implement stuff, you've missed an opportunity, too.

    As far as the javascript part is concerned, well, it's not my favorite language, but it could bring in a significant new developer base that already exists in many corporate IT departments.

    Perhaps, but the thing that galls me most about javascript is that most of its dorkiest features have been known to be dorky for some time. It's not the lack of features that really annoy me about software, it's the lack of learning. That said, javascript (to my surprise, I must admit) does have some fairly nice features, and javascript 2 promises to be a significant improvement.

  • The quote is:
    Plan to throw one away, you will anyhow.
    -- Fred Brooks _The Mythical Man Month_
  • A Web browser is a Web browser. A file manager is a file manager. A media player is a media player. Trying to combine these into one massive app is just a bad idea.

    Am inclined to agree. They've done it because it's 'cool' and shows off the elegance of the underlying componentised design, I guess, but the very screenshots they use to show this off clearly demonstrate why this is a usability nightmare:

    Here you've got several unrelated applications munged together in panes of one window, with one menu bar and tool bar for all of them, but one status bar for each of them, which seems unrelated to the content pane. It's unclear how the panes relate to each other and how changes in one might affect the others and the rest of the system.

    The advantage of this over having separate windows which the user can manage themselves? None AFAICT.

    Konq's a great web browser though. I easily prefer even v1 to Netscape 4.


    --
    This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
  • I would like to enlighten all the people who are complaining that KDE is going the Microsoft way and trying to make Konqueror one huge app.
    A) In this case, the Microsoft way is the right way.
    B) Konqueror and to a slightly lesser extent, IE, are not one huge app.
    By integrating access to all sorts of data, the user experiance is greatly simplified and made much more efficient. Maybe it's just me, but browsing some files, typing in a URL to download a file, then going back to the file manager to unzip it and install is sheer coolness (or Koolness!)Normally, this efficiency would come at the expense of speed and bloat, but not in this case. Such is the magic of COM (or KOM, what KDE calls its clone if it) Because Konqueror and IE are implemented as a set of COM objects, these can be loaded at will. Unlike Bonobo (which is a damn ugly architecture, IMHO) large portions of applications with a significant amount of glue inbetween are not loaded. Instead, the system is built on a set of small reusable object. In some cases the overall bloat of the system can actually go down! Take, for example, MS Word. When IE browses over to a MS word file, the MS word editing object is loaded and inserted into IE. If you had wanted to see it, you would have had to open up word anyway, or a redundant version of the interface would have had to have been built into IE. In the case both word and IE browsing a word document are loaded, then only one copy of the editing object is loaded into memory. See, magic! This object-ness can become even more interesting. Imagine a system API implemented as a set of COM objects. (Kinda like DirectX without the hungarian notation.) Now the system is VERY cleanly extendible, with no dependencies on a specific version of the API and no ulgy _createWindowEx2ExtendedEnhancedAFX()-type function calls. In addition to all that, it's fast. Common COM local object calls are about has efficient was a C++ virtual function call (it's a deference through a v-table) Compare this to all the marshalling and dispatching inherent in Cobra, and you'll see why COM is so nifty. So it's fast, flexible, and can save memory. What's not to like?
  • Just tried them both in today's CVS snapshot - it can deal with dynamicdrive.com perfectly,

    netmeister.org doesn't work (black page), but a quick check at validator. w3.org [w3.org] shows why...

    Please try making the pages more standards-compliant.

  • Yay! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It doesn't seem to have a mail client and news reader tacked on it! Woohoo.

    It just browses stuff whether it be the web, ftp or local files.
  • That looks like a pretty nifty browser. I particularly like how it allows you to split the browser window into multiple frames for simultaneously viewing a web site, an ftp site, and your local disk. Drag and drop ftp within the browser is kind of cool.

    However, I use Window Maker, and I don't want to bog down my system with the QT libs. So it's not really something for me.

    Maybe one of the Mozilla-based browsers that come out next year will be right for someone in my situation. I just want something light-weight that'll handle HTML 4.0, javascript, and the other standards-based stuff. I really don't care for the proprietary things like Realmedia, Flash, and so on.

    I'll take the first 100% standards-based, light-weight, speedy, crash-proof browser for Linux that comes along. :)
  • ftp.kde.org works for me...
    If you still can't get there, you might want to try
    http://people.redhat.com/bero/experimen tal/ [redhat.com]
    or
    http://www.nebsllc.com/kde/ftpkde2/curr ent/ [nebsllc.com]
    for current KDE snapshots.
  • Hmmm. XML based configuration of menus and other stuff; support for ECMA script; support for an object embedding and linking model... Stir in Reiser FS (to handle data storage at the file system level instead of the file level)...

    I can see this assemblage of stuff morphing into a VB like application platform.

    I can see this assemblage of stuff morphing into Mozilla. :-) Seriously, I dunno about the file system stuff, but the rest of it sounds a lot like XPToolkit [mozilla.org] combined with XPCOM [mozilla.org]. Some people would argue that we really didn't need two or three different groups persuing the same kind of architecture, but I'm just as happy to see that multiple groups have caught on to the same basic idea, which is a pretty good one. Well, except for the javascript part; I still can't think very pleasant thoughts about that...

  • How is it's development?

    Me, I want a browser with support for HTML 4, CSS1, and perhaps XML.

    It could happen with Lynx but will it?

  • So it's a copy of Magellan for KDE?

    If you want to think of it that way, go ahead. :^) I can assure you that the Evolution developers are thinking of it as a substitute for Outlook, not Magellan. But since they all seem to be in about the same application space, it doesn't really matter.

    If you want a free software IMAP reader, and you're adventurous, you could always try Mutt [mutt.org] or GNUS [gnus.org] in the meantime. :^)

  • The RSA patent expires in September. Then, we'll be able to put openssl right into Konqueror, Lynx and other web browsers, AFAIK.

    --
  • Assuming you are the same AC as before, and that you *really are* serious, go to http://www.tucows.com/ and then on via the operating system of your choice (try win95) to the software menus.

    There, you will see hundreds of applications; freeware, shareware and (I think) demos doing everything their authors could imagine. A lot of them duplicate each other. Welcome to the real world.

    As for Ivory Towers, where are you? Cuba? China? A company that only uses M$ products? Duplication is normal, otherwise we would all be using whatever text processors were available in 1985.

    Konquerer is another web browser with lots of lovely add-ons. If it is the best, I will move to it. If not, Mozilla should be ready by then.
  • html4.0 is almost finished.

    css1 is almost completed.

    css2 has partial support.

    Java applets work.

    JavaScript still needs some work.

    They are working at blinding speeds, though.

    Try it out for yourself if you really want to know.


    -- Thrakkerzog
  • The KDE html widget was started well before Mozilla was born as an open source project. Gnome took the same approach: have you ever noticed that the Gnome help browser has its own html rendering engine?

    When both of these were started, there was no lightweight, modern, open source rendering widget available for the approrpiate language and toolkit, and therefore both projects developed one.

    KDE had the head start, and thus their widget was getting pretty capable by the time Moz was OSed. Gnome were a little behind, and therefore it was worth them switching to Mozilla (And recently this work has been taken up by Eazel for Nautilus).

    The result: both Konqueror and Nautilus look as though they will be pretty capable. If they maintain some sort of parity, I guess who uses which will depend on which desktop they use (and therefore to some extent which Linux distro).

    The competition will encourage developers to provide good standards support, and to fix any deficiencies in their project. Neither side will be able to argue that 'You need 64Mb for a modern web browser' if the competitor runs in 32Mb.

    So I am convinced that Konqueror is a good thing, even though I expect to be browsing on Nautilus a year from now.
  • Until Linux as a whole is standardised by a central body incorporated under law, it will never succeed in drawing in users who want an OS that they can do something with, rather than people who want a toy they can spend all of their time configuring.

    That's precisely what is *not* needed. Free Software and Open Standards are all about *interoperability*. For example - Corel might be producing the Linux distribution you want: it works out of the box and requires very little tinkering.

    However, I would expect to be able to exchange files with you, created on (say) a Debian box, or a BSD box, or a Linux box created for myself from scratch. It's all about choice.

    You are free to use a 100% KDE or Gnome setup if you so choose: you will find that if you only use Gnome applications, for example, they will work together very well.

    ... but it's a choice. I you then decide to use Athena Ghostview, you have that option. Isn't that fair enough?
    --

  • KDE2/Konqueror RPMs (Score:4)

    by RPoet ( 20693 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2000 @04:02AM (#1098024) Journal
    You can try out KDE2 already by downloading binaries (RPM/tarballs) from http://www.nebsllc.com/kde/ft pkde2/current/index.html [nebsllc.com].

    It's not complete and bugfree, and it has several flaws, but trying it out just to see the huge improvements from KDE1 is fun! :-)
    --

  • No, Microsoft got in trouble for leveraging its monopolistic level of control of the operating system market to destroy competitors in other markets. The browser integration was designed specifically to make it impossible to get Windows without IE, and thus reduce incentive to get Netscape, by putting the Windows GUI, user shell and IE into one big congealed lump.

    In a technical sense, though, it makes sense to integrate browser components with other parts of a system. For example, a HTML control could be made into a general GUI object, and used from things such as help browsers; graphic file decoders, a JavaScript engine and such may also be modularised as that. Which doesn't necessarily mean putting a web-navigation toolbar on every window in the system or having directories shown by default as "web pages".

    As for non-GUI-dependent applications, they can be useful. (I read all my mail with mutt in an xterm.) Though as far as console-based browsers go, they're unlikely to advance far beyond where Lynx is today.
  • I can see this assemblage of stuff morphing into Mozilla. :-) Seriously, I dunno about the file system stuff, but the rest of it sounds a lot like XPToolkit combined with XPCOM. Some people would argue that we really didn't need two or three different groups persuing the same kind of architecture, but I'm just as happy to see that multiple groups have caught on to the same basic idea, which is a pretty good one. Well, except for the javascript part; I still can't think very pleasant thoughts about that...

    Not to mention work going on with wxWindows, which really rocks, especially combined with Python.

    I really agree that having multiple groups working on competing projects is a good thing. There are different sets of assumptions which lead to different solutions. Prime examples: how cross platform? Relatively stand alone or part of a larger desktop environment? Run natively or in a browser?

    What's really clear to me is that there needs to be a good solution that plays in the current VB space - quick and dirty bolt together applications developed with relatively low levels of expertise. VB has the corporate IT market strapped over a barrel.

    As far as the javascript part is concerned, well, it's not my favorite language, but it could bring in a significant new developer base that already exists in many corporate IT departments.

  • Konqueror actually supports encryption already, if OpenSSL is installed.
    The export restrictions are no longer there, the RSA patent will expire soon (and has never been valid outside of the US), and since Konqueror doesn't use RSA directly (that's OpenSSL's part), it's not a problem.
    As for the component architecture, KDE is using a shared library approach (the embedded widgets are actually in the same process), which is functionally similar to what bonobo does, but very different technically.
    Both approaches have their good and bad sides - bonobo is more general, the KDE approach is more lightweight (and therefore faster) and probably more stable.
  • SSL support is there (if you have installed OpenSSL when compiling Konqueror).
    XHTML (I presume this is what you mean with XML?) is not yet fully supported, but most pages written in XHTML display well in Konqueror (to a renderer, there's not much of a difference between HTML 4.0 and XHTML 1.0).
  • Sounds like a Germanic diminutive to me; which is rather appropriate, given the large continental European market share Linux has. Also, it makes it sound slightly more exotic.
  • KFM does do ftp. Just use an FTP URL like ftp://ftp.foo.org/pr0n/ to get to the pr0n directory of ftp.foo.org as an anonymous user. To connect with a username/password, use ftp://luser@ftp.foo.org/pr0n.

    Once you are connected, you can browse around in your nice, GUI KFM window.
  • Konqi 2000 R-R-R-Ready To Ass-s-s-s-st You, Pee-Wee!

    :)

    Bowie J. Poag
  • I can see this assemblage of stuff morphing into bloatware, ala netscape style.

    Probably right out of the gate, as far as you're concerned, because of KDE. Once you accept the overhead of a desktop, you might as well take advantage of it. The nice thing is none of this is particularly closely tied to the OS, so you can forgo the overhead if you don't want the benefits.

    Your analogy is a bit off though; netscape is an application, what I envision is more of a toolbox.
  • Well first of all, I would like to question what makes it a threat to mozilla? It is all well and good that kde has its own filemanager/browser, things that are pretty standard these days, but will it be a great browser? I personally do not think so. Sure Konqueror will be usable but it will lack the ever important crypto in the source version. Crypto binaries are a option I suppose. But my point is that the a pure Konqueror will not allow the user to order stuff through encrypted channels or even read e-mail in some cases. Perhaps I am missing the whole point in general but why praise a browser that few people have really ever even tried? I would think that less than a tenth of the number of people who have tried a mozilla/netscape 6 release have tried this konqueror thing- it is not battle proven. Since the original post mentioned mozilla, I have to mention that the GNOME team is/has integrated mozilla into their filemanager of the future, nautilus. I know that GNOME has bonobo which is responsible for its component architecture, including the mozilla integration, but I have recently read that KDE 2.0 is suppposed to be highly componentilized also. Is KDE using something like bonobo?

    "Internet Explorer is not demonstrably the current 'best of breed' Web browser"
  • I must say, I'm impressed. The interface looks clean. The program seems to have covered all the basics from file management, web browsing, ftp transfer, image viewing, and document previewing which are all things that should be hamdled by a.... hmmm?

    What would you call it? The standard terms File Manager and Web Browser conjure completely different visions of applications functionality.

    I wonder how long before MS does something similar and calls it an "Innovation"? And before some High Priest of Redmond jumps all over me saying that IE5 already does it, think again and read up on the app. It does a few things IE5 doesn't do very well or at all.
  • If you read the web page you soon realize that Konqueror is more than just a web browser, it's view and file manager as well. Sound familiar? Internet explorer does this for windows and this has been one of the arguments against Microsoft in the recent court case. I personally believe that MS and now KDE have got it right on this point, many years ago their was a similar argument about GUI's being bundled with the OS but most would object to the absence of one now. I am expecting the same to happen with browser functionality, all desktop operating systems will go this way eventually and one-day we will look back and wonder what the fuss was about.

  • Evolution is the GNOME email, calendar, and contact manager. Think of it as Outlook on Linux and on steroids, and you'll get the idea. Check out the Evolution page [helixcode.com] at Helix Code [helixcode.com] for details.

  • I agree, Microsoft buisiness practices are the big issue in the case, and the one people should stick to. Microsoft are guilty as hell of monopoly missuse.

    The side issue of making a browser part of the gui is the issue in my post, the government and the doj should not be able to dictate on this issue.
  • Just pretend it's Indian for "evil death machine, destroyer of worlds and master of the underworld".

    :)

    :wq!

  • Re:future capabilities! (Score:3)

    by bero-rh ( 98815 ) <bero&redhat,com> on Tuesday May 02, 2000 @04:00AM (#1098085) Homepage
    how much of it is working so I can download it now and use it instead of netscape?

    Almost all of the functionality is there right now, it just needs to be fixed up.

    You can get a current copy out of the KDE CVS tree, or get an RPM at
    http://people.redhat.com/bero/experimen tal/ [redhat.com].

    Konqueror is part of the kdebase package. It needs kdesupport and kdelibs to run.

  • Re:Why Konqueror? (Score:3)

    by TheTomcat ( 53158 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2000 @04:13AM (#1098087) Homepage
    There is entirely too much abuse of useless java apps, useless javascript requirements, useless flash, and a bunch of other crap that looks pretty but makes your website less usable.

    [what follows is slightly OT]

    I agree with you on the whole 'too much useless crap' notion, but you seem to think that usability is the most important part of website design, as does most of the slashdot community. A lot of you/us seem bent on the idea of 'make everything text, get rid of images, get rid of animations'

    I believe that it's good to consider the users who are unable to view all that fun stuff, but without it, what exactly _is_ the web? I'll tell you: gopher.

    Every month, I shell out the $7 for the printed version of Wired magazine. Why? Most of the stuff in there is available online now, from wired, or otherwise. Simple. I like all the cool stuff they do with their mag. Fluorescent spot colors, metallic inks, scratch and sniff covers, all of that makes it worth the $7 to me.

    Same with web sites. If a site is bland, but has good information, you'll get somewhat poor user opinions. Same as a flashy, animated, graphic, loud site with no good information. The key is getting a mix of both that degrades gracefully to browsers that don't support 'features' of your site.

    Sorry. My rant-of-the-week.

  • I think that the key difference is that Microsoft forced the bundling, you have the choice of IE and Windows or neither.

    One word which does seem to apply within and across Linux distributions is 'choice'.

  • How does Konquerer handle layers and DHTML? It says that it supports JavaScript standards, but how does it display pages that rely heavily on DHTML (like my own (http://www.netmeister.org [netmeister.org]) or anything from http://www.dynamicdrive.com/ [dynamicdrive.com])?
  • Since a good deal of KDE development takes place in Europe, there are rather less barriers to including encryption than there are in more US-centric projects like Mozilla. As a result, the encryption is already there.

    Of course recent US legislation has largely removed those barriers.
  • Actually, I think you have it wrong. True, OpenParts is being replaced with KParts, but I don't care because OpenParts was based on Cobra (which IMO sucks terribly.) DCOP is an IPC system replacing MIOC. As far as I can tell, KOM still provides the backbone for all this.

  • What about the CSS support? (Score:4)

    by Lonesmurf ( 88531 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2000 @03:09AM (#1098099) Homepage
    Has anyone tested how extensive the CSS/CSS2 support in Konqueror is? All of the other main browsers (yes, even Mozilla) support CSS in a very patchy 'mine field' sort of way.

    I'm getting really tired of writing CSS that works in only one version of one platform. What's up with that?

    How hard could it possibly be to support CSS in an even way, across *all* platforms??

    CSS Level 1 [w3.org]

    CSS Level 2 [w3.org]

    Two last notes:

    IE5 *on the MACINTOSH* has the most extensive CSS1 coverage BEFORE IT WAS EVEN A COMPLETE RECOMMENDATION. Almost perfect (still problems with embedded fonts and some other stuff).

    What about CSS3? Anyone heard what the browsers are doing about this? IE3 supported some minimal CSS1 back in the day, why aren't browsers not only keeping up, but staying ahead of the curve?

    Rami James
    Pixel Pusher
    ALST R&D Center, IL
    --
  • Really? In Windows, COM acts as a shared object interface, stuff like COBRA isn't even a part of it. (I don't even think COM is cobra complient, distributed objects are handled by DCOM and higher level stuff is done through OLE.) COM on windows is sort of like classes that can only be accessed by pointers. It does function as a glue-layer for OLE, but the whole embedding application thing never really made sense to me. For me it makes more sense to use straight COM and built many different applications with a smaller set of high funcitonality objects.
  • ok. most of the OSS guys out there, including me, are solid in support of GNOME and Mozilla. I myself was a GNOME maniac, till i am forced to use this SuSE 6.3 (eval) system, which doesn't even have the courtesy to include GNOME along. I think people (call them lusers or anything) prefer a smooth transition onto Linux, and i think KDE gives them everything that they need. I'm not saying that the Helix Code guyz are beating around the bush, but i guess u've gotta give the credit to those who deserve it. whether we like it or not, Konqueror definitely opens up a new avenue in the list of Linux browsers, and Mozilla, howmuch ever it maybe hyped just hasn't got it. Its too slow, crashes a lot, and doesn't even have stable Java support. Opera seemed to be a good alternative for a brief period of time, but it looks like another looser. I've seen other projects (Mnemonic) have good ideals, but who never got anywhere. I think getting the ideas and implemeting them, and moreover, making them usable by the users, is a big concern, and guys no denying that the KDE guys are doing it all.
  • Still the same - it displays a black page.
    The biggest problem is your reliance on the LAYER tags, which is not part of the official HTML 4.0 Transitional standard.
  • This site is beautifully presented, with some beautiful screenshots and entertaining writing. I believe nitehorse is responsible, so: Good job!

    Here's the flash support that was being referred to:

    On Tue, 25 Apr 2000, Stefan Schimanski wrote:
    > I've uploaded two screenshots of the flash version of Moorhuhnjagd running
    > in Konqueror:
    >
    > ftp://139.174.246.173/pub/nsplugin/moor1.jpg or
    > http://www.kudling.de/kde/moor1.jpg
    >
    > ftp://139.174.246.173/pub/nsplugin/moor2.jpg or
    > http://www.kudling.de/kde/moor2.jpg

  • An intriguing idea, however... (Score:3)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2000 @04:26AM (#1098124)
    I do find this trend of converging every possible function into a single app to be most disconcerting. It happened with Win98 and KFM, it's happenning to Konqueror, and even Mozilla is getting in on the act (in a few different ways, but it's just as guilty as the others). Gnome's Nautilus seems to be slightly different (each aspect being a Bonobo component, and thus a separate module) but the end result seems to be the same, so I'll roll it in here too.

    A Web browser is a Web browser. A file manager is a file manager. A media player is a media player. Trying to combine these into one massive app is just a bad idea, no matter the platform or widget set or whatever. Rolling FTP into the original KFM was different; that's still managing files (on a remote machine, perhaps, but same basic idea). Not at all like Web browsing, where the goal is to view files rather than manage them.

    So why bring them together into one massive app that's nightmarish to debug when you can simply make several smaller apps, each of which does its job more efficiently and is still much easier to program and maintain? You also don't have the overhead of interface components which might make sense in, say, a Web browser but not a file manager (do file managers really need a throbber? And what use is the "delete" function on a Web browser where 99.99% of the time you wouldn't even have permission to delete files anyway?)

    Nothing against KDE; I prefer Gnome myself but use both on a regular basis since the Solaris boxen here only have KDE. But I'm not so sure that making Konqueror into The App That Does Everything (tm) is such a good idea.
  • What happend here?

    It looks like your post was intended for the last news item "Attacking Open Source".
  • The old notion of RMS-style "Free Software", with it's conotations of socialism and collectivism . . .

    Would it help you if you saw it as naked capitalism: 'May the best product win'?

    Who the hell is supposed to lay down which compiler, browser, editor, GUI or whatever I wish to use? You? No way. Welcome to the old Eastern Europe. Sorry, but that idea has nothing to recommend it - nothing at all.

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